Passage. Part 65

"I thought I could catch the Rio Grande. But there weren't any tracks. Just the telegraph wires.

But I could still send a message. I could climb one of the poles and send a message."

She was only half-listening. Rio Grande. Not Grand Staircase. Rio Grande.

"...and it was too far to ride on horseback," Carl was saying, staring straight ahead, "but I had to get it through." As he spoke, he jogged gently up and down, his arms bent as if he were holding on to reins.This is what Guadalupe thought was rowing, Joanna thought, even though it didn't look like rowing. It looked like what it was, Carl riding a horse. He wasn't humming, "Nearer, My G.o.d, to Thee," she thought. It was probably "Home on the Range."

And Mrs. Woollam had been in a garden. Mrs. Davenport had seen an angel. But she had wanted it to be a woman in a nightdress. She had wanted it to be the Verandah Cafe and the Grand Staircase. To fit her theory. So she had twisted the evidence to fit, ignored the discrepancies, led the witnesses, and believed what she wanted to. Just like Mr. Mandrake.

She had been so set on her idea she'd refused to accept the truth-that Carl had gotten his desert, his Apaches, from the Westerns his wife read to him, incorporating them into the red expanse of his coma the way she'd incorporated Mr. Briarley's t.i.tanic stories into hers. Because they happened to be there in long-term memory.

And the imagery meant nothing. It wasn't universal. It was as random, as pointless, as Mr.

Bendix's seeing Elvis. And the feeling of something significant, something important, came from an overstimulated temporal lobe. And meanwhile, she had bullied Amelia Tanaka, she had hara.s.sed a man just out of a coma and possibly endangered his health, breaking rules right and left. Acting like a nutcase.

"...before it got dark," Carl was saying, "but when I got closer, I saw the Apaches were already there."

Joanna put the bluebird greeting card and the pen in her pocket and stood up. "I should go," she said. Before Guadalupe catches me in here. Before the review board finds out you didn't sign a waiver. Before anyone finds out how I've acted. She patted the covers. "You need to get some sleep."

"Are you leaving?" he said, and his hand lunged for her wrist like a striking snake. "Don't leave."

He gripped it tightly. "I'm afraid I'll go back there, and it's getting dark back there. It's getting redder."

"It's all right, Carl," Joanna said soothingly. "It was just a dream."

"No. It was a real place. Arizona. I knew it was, because of the mesas. But it wasn't. And it was. I can't explain it."

"You knew Arizona was a symbol for something else."

"Yes," he said, and she thought, It does mean something. The NDE isn't just random synapses firing, random a.s.sociations. "What was it a symbol for, Carl?" she asked, and waited, breath held, for his answer.

"They scalped Cody. Took the top of his skull right off, and I could see his brain. It was all red,"

he said. "I had to get out, before it got dark. I had to get the mail through."

The mail. The letters floating in the ankle-deep water of the mail room, the names on their envelopes blurred and unreadable, and the mail clerk putting them onto higher and higher racks, dragging them up the carpeted stairs."The mail?" Joanna asked, her chest tight.

"For the Pony Express," he said. "Cody was the regular rider, but they killed him, and I didn't have any way to get the mail through. It was too far to ride on a horse, and the Apaches had cut the wires."

And the Carpathia was too far away, Joanna thought. The Californian wasn't answering. She thought of Mr. Briarley writing a postcard to Kit, sending up rockets, trying to send out messages.

And none of them getting through.

"The mesa was a long way," Carl was saying, "and I was afraid there wouldn't be anything up there to make a fire with."

"A fire?" Joanna said, thinking of Maisie.

"For the smoke signal. I got the idea from the Apaches. You hold the blanket down over the fire and then yank it back, and the smoke goes up." He pulled back on an imaginary blanket, his hands holding its imaginary sides, a sharp backward motion with both hands. Like rowing. Like rowing.

"I didn't know any Apache," he said. "All I knew was Morse code."

The sailor working the Morse lamp, and Jack Phillips, bent tirelessly over the wireless key, tapping out CQD, SOS-"SOS," she said. "You sent an SOS."

"And as soon as I did, the nurse was opening the curtains and I was back here."

"You were back here," Joanna said, remembering Mr. Edwards saying, "The light started to flash, and I knew I had to go back, and all of a sudden I was in the operating room." Remembering Mrs. Woollam saying, "I was in the tunnel, and then all of a sudden I was back on the floor by the phone." Remembering Richard saying, "Something just kicks them out."

Out in the hall, a voice said excitedly, "We found her!"

Joanna glanced at the door, the half-open door she had forgotten to shut. "Finally," Guadalupe's voice said, and then, "Where were you? We've been looking all over for you."

Looking all over. The steward, heading up the aft staircase to the Promenade Deck, checking the smoking room, the gymnasium, looking for Mr. Briarley. And Mr. Briarley, running down to G Deck, along Scotland Road, into the mail room, looking for the key. The key.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" Joanna breathed. "I know what it is!" She put her hand up to her mouth. "I remember what Mr. Briarley said!"

39.

"Well, Wiley's got her warmed up. Let's go."-Last radio broadcast by Will Rogers before the plane crash in which he and Wiley Post were killed.

What?" Carl said, alarmed. "What do you mean, you know what it is?" but Joanna didn't hear him.

I have to tell Richard, she thought. I have to tell him I've figured it out.

She stood up. "You're not leaving, are you?" Carl said, reaching for her wrist again. "You know what what is? What Arizona is?"

"He's sitting up talking," Guadalupe's voice said out in the hall.

They're coming this way, Joanna thought. She stood up and jammed the scribbled-on greeting card in her pocket. "Your wife's here," she said, and hurried toward the door before Carl could protest.

And how was she going to explain her being here? she wondered, peering out the door. Mrs.

Aspinall was standing next to the nurses' station, Guadalupe and the aide bent comfortingly over her.

"You shouldn't cry now," the aide was saying, "it's all over."

"I don't want him to see me like this," Mrs. Aspinall said tearfully, dabbing at her eyes.

"I'll get you a Kleenex," Guadalupe said, disappearing around the corner of the nurses' station.

Joanna didn't hesitate. She bolted out the door, across the hall, and into the waiting room, and just in time. Guadalupe reappeared with the Kleenex, Mrs. Aspinall blew her nose, and all three of them started toward Carl's room.

There was no one in the waiting room. Joanna leaned against the door, waiting for them to go into the room. It's an SOS, Joanna thought, belated understanding pouring in like seawater through the gash in the t.i.tanic's side. That's what the NDE is. It's the dying brain sending out a call for help, a distress signal, tapping out Morse-code messages to the nervous system: "Come at once. We have struck a berg."

Transmitting signals to the brain's neurotransmitters, trying to find one that could kick lungs that were no longer breathing into action, trying to find one that could jump-start a heart that was no longer beating. Trying to find the right one.

And sometimes it succeeded, reviving patients who were clinically dead, bringing them back abruptly, miraculously. Like Mr. O'Reirdon. Like Mrs. Woollam. Because the message got through.

"Carl, oh, Carl!" Mrs. Aspinall said tearfully. "You're all right!"

Joanna looked down the hall. Mrs. Aspinall and Guadalupe had gone into the room, and the aide was headed back toward the elevators, carrying a piece of equipment.Joanna waited till she'd gone into the elevator, and then ran down to the nurses' station. She grabbed up the phone receiver from behind the counter, leaning over it to punch in the lab's number. If Guadalupe caught her out here, she'd just think she'd gone and then come back.

If Carl hasn't blabbed, she thought, listening to the phone ring. "Answer, Richard," she murmured. "Answer."

Answer. That was what the NDE was doing, too, punching in numbers and listening to the phone ring, trying to get through, hoping someone would answer on the other end. And if Richard knows it's an SOS, she thought, he'll be able to figure out what the other end is.

And no wonder her mind, trying to make sense of it, had fastened on to the t.i.tanic. It was the perfect metaphor. The SOS sent five minutes after the Californian's wireless operator had gone to bed, the Morse lamp, the rockets, the screams for help from the water. And above all, Phillips sitting in the wireless room, faithfully tapping out, "SOS, CQD," tapping out, "We are flooded up to the boilers," sending out calls for help to the very end.

Richard wasn't answering. He's sitting at the console, she thought, staring at Mrs. Troudtheim's scan, trying to figure out the problem. "It's not a problem, Richard," she murmured. "It's the answer."

And it made evolutionary sense, just like he had predicted it would. The NDE wasn't cushioning the body from trauma, wasn't setting a death program in motion. It was trying to stop it.

The answering machine clicked on. "This is Dr. Wright's office. If you wish to leave-" his voice said, but Joanna had already jammed the phone down and was pelting up the stairs to the lab.

Richard wasn't there. The door was locked, so he intended to be gone for longer than a few minutes. She unlocked it and went in, and then stood there, staring around the deserted lab, trying to think where he might have gone. Down to the cafeteria for lunch? she thought, and glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to one. The cafeteria might actually be open this time of day.

He said he had an appointment, she thought, and tried to remember his words when he was in her office. He'd said, "I'm going to be out of the lab for a while." Where?

Dr. Jamison, she thought, what Richard had said clicking in suddenly. She walked rapidly over to the phone and called the switchboard. "Get me Dr. Jamison's office," and listened to another droning ring.

Doesn't anybody answer their phones? Joanna thought. No, and the brain kept calling and calling, trying first one number and then, when there was no answer, another. Dialing and redialing, punching in code after code, trying to connect.

She depressed the receiver b.u.t.ton and called the switchboard again. "Where's Dr. Jamison's office? What floor?"

"I'll have to look that up," the operator said, and, after a maddening minute, "841."

"Thanks," Joanna said and started to hang up, then thought better of it. "I want you to page her for me," she said."Do you want her to call the lab?"

"No. My pager. And I want you to page Dr. Wright, too," she said, reaching in her pocket to switch her pager on, thinking with a sudden sinking feeling, He won't have his turned on either.

She hung up. Room 841 was in the west wing. The shortest way would be to go down to fifth and take the walkway across. No, they were painting the walkway on fifth. Down to the walkway on third. She scribbled a note: "Went to find you. Page me," dropped it on his desk, and ran out, slamming the door behind her, not even taking the time to lock it, hitting the elevator b.u.t.ton again and again, willing it to open, willing it not to stop on fifth, or fourth.

When the elevator opened on third, she ran down the hall, across the walkway, and through Medicine to the other walkway. Don't let Mrs. Davenport be out taking a const.i.tutional, she thought, glancing nervously at the door to her room. I don't have time to listen to her latest confabulations.

Joanna pressed close to the other wall and hurried past the half-open door, past the sunroom, past the nurses' station.

"Hey, Doc!" a voice called behind her. "Doc!" Mr. Wojakowski. She kept going, acting as if she hadn't heard him. Down to the end of the hall. Around the corner. Into the walkway.

The walkway door opened behind her. "Doc!" Mr. Wojakowski called, panting. "Doc Lander!

Wait up!" and there was nothing to do but turn around.

"I thought that was you, Doc," he said, beaming. "I saw you back there and tried to catch you as you went past, but you were going like you'd just heard 'em sound 'Battle Stations.' Where you headin' in such a hurry?"

"I'm looking for Dr. Wright. I have to find him right away," she said.

"I haven't seen him," he said cheerfully. "I came to visit a friend of mine." He nodded his head back in the direction of Medicine. "Had a stroke. Bad one, too. One whole side paralyzed, can't talk.

Happened while he was square dancing. Fell over right in the middle of a dosey-doh-"

"I'm sorry to hear that," Joanna said, glancing toward the end of the walkway. "I wish I could stay and talk. L-"

"You know who you remind me of? Ace Willey. He was a midshipman on the Yorktown, and he was always in a hurry. 'Where the h.e.l.l do you think you're going in such a hurry?' I used to say to him. 'You're on a d.a.m.ned ship.' Well, one day, he's hurrying across the hangar deck, and he steps into an open hatch and-"

"Mr. Wojakowski, I'd love to hear the rest of your story, but I've got to go. I have to find Dr.

Wright." She took off across the walkway, looking determinedly ahead.

"Wait up, Doc." He caught up to her as she reached the door. "I had something I wanted to ask you."

She pushed open the door. "Mr. Wojakowski, I-""Ed."

"Ed," she said, not stopping. "I'm sorry, but I just don't have time to talk."

"I just wanted to know if you'd ever got that schedule of yours figured out," he said, panting to keep up with her.

"No," Joanna said, rounding the corner and coming, finally, to the elevators. She pushed the b.u.t.ton, praying, Please don't take forever. "We'll let you know as soon as we do."

"Good. Just give me a call," he said. "I can do it just about anytime."

The elevator finally, blessedly opened and Joanna stepped in. For one awful moment she thought he intended to follow her, but he had just stepped up to the elevator's edge. "So anyway, Ace wasn't looking where he was going, and he stepped in an open hatch and fell two full decks. Broke both legs. Spent the next year and a half in a hospital on Oahu."

Joanna pushed "eight" and the door started slowly, slowly to close. " 'So where did all your hurrying get you?' I asked him," he said as the door slid shut. "You shoulda seen him, all hung up in traction and two plaster casts that went all the way up to his-"

He was still talking when the elevator door snicked shut. And probably still talking, Joanna thought, stepping out of the elevator on eight and looking for the room signs.

"830-850," one of them said, pointing to the hall on the left. She started down it, looking for 841. Two Hispanic men in white coveralls stood down by the end, leaning over a cl.u.s.ter of buckets, mixing paint.

All of the doors in the hall were open except 841. Joanna knocked on it, banging progressively harder when no one answered. She tried the door. It was locked. "Do you know where Dr. Jamison is?" she called down to the painters.

They both shook their heads and went back to pouring paint from one bucket to another.

Joanna frowned at the door, frustrated. Where were they? Had they gone someplace else to talk? To the cafeteria, maybe?

She walked down to the painters, who both straightened up, as if expecting to be lectured by her. "Did either of you see Dr. Jamison leave?" Joanna asked. They shook their heads again, with a timidity that made her wonder if either of them spoke English.

"Senor-" she began, and a young man stuck his head out of the door next to Dr. Jamison's office and said, "You're looking for Dr. Jamison? She had to go see somebody in the ER."

"Thank you," Joanna said. "Do you know if Dr. Wright was with her?"

He shook his head. "I just got back from lunch and saw her note."